Today marks my last blog posting before our traditional summer recess. As many of you know, I tend to take most of my vacation time during July and August, so suffice it to say you won't be finding me in any of our offices most Fridays for the next few weeks. I take time off over the summer to enjoy the marvelous weather, beaches, golf courses and other recreational activities that the East End of Long Island has to offer. It's also a time to re-charge both mind and body. A little mental decompressing and increased physical activity is not a bad thing, and the summer is the best time to do it.

Thoughts of the Week started 2 1/2 years ago as another way to connect with our clients and friends, while increasing our Firm's presence in social media. It has evolved over that time period, for those of you who read the column regularly, into a Friday morning ritual that allows me to share what's on my mind and let you get to know our Firm on a much more personal and human level, because, truth be told, I haven't met most of you in person. I really appreciate this opportunity, because personal connections with many clients are often difficult to achieve for people with my job in companies of our size. The best part of it all is the weekly feedback I receive from many of you, mostly positive but sometimes not, depending on what that week's thought might be.

As with everything else at Marcum, this is not a solo effort. I have a team to support me in this endeavor and make it look much better in the end than it starts out at the beginning, today's column being no exception. Most (yes, most) weeks I come up with the topic and do the writing myself. But the first draft is not what you see. For the weeks I make it to late Thursday afternoon with a severe case of writer's block, I'm able to scream for help. My go-to person, my editor and collaborator, is our Director of Public Relations, Julie Gross Gelfand, who works out of our Melville, Long Island office. When I write, she makes it readable; when I can't figure it out, she bails me out and then I return the favor by doing her editing. It scares me sometimes that she's actually able to capture my voice.

When Julie and I finish our weekly back and forth, sometimes as late as 9am Friday morning, it then goes to West Palm Beach, Florida, where Chris Pelosi, our Director of Online Marketing, creates the format which gets emailed to approximately 30,000 of our clients and friends - no small task, especially at the last minute, as happens on occasion.

So, not only do I get a respite for the next two months, but so do Julie and Chris. Today's column is my thank you to them. Doing this every week would not at all be possible without their dedication and contributions. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

I hope all of you reading this get to take some time for yourselves over the next two months and enjoy whatever summer has to offer, wherever you may find yourselves. We look forward to reconnecting the Friday after Labor Day with our next posting.

Father's Day is one of my favorite days of the year - if not my all-time favorite. In our house, some of these simple celebrations become a weekend long event. Ours kicked off last night when my son Leo picked me up at JFK at 3:30 pm after an early flight back to NY from LA, where I spent this week. There is literally nothing I enjoy more than having all five of my children, aged 3 years old to 23 years old, together with Tracy and me at home, along with our extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, many of whom come in and out as the weekend progresses.

Father's Day Weekend at the Weiner household is a festive affair. We play, we roughhouse, we eat and drink (probably more than we should), and we laugh. It's truly my idea of a great time. Even (maybe especially) the part where I stand in front of a hot grill and cook up a feast fit for a royal family. It started last night, after the little ones were in bed, with a feast of steak and tuna from the grill and a perfect salad that Tracy put together.

It's often said that less is more. Vincent Musetto, the celebrated New York Post headline writer who died on Tuesday from cancer, at the age of 74, turned that simple adage into career gold. Musetto is credited with writing what is widely considered to be the greatest newspaper headline of all time: Headless Body in Topless Bar.

The famous line capped a gruesome story about a murder in a Bronx watering hole, in April 1983. I won't repeat the gory details here (you can find them all over the internet, if you're so inclined), but suffice it to say that Musetto's wry and ingenious headline became bigger than the story itself, earning a place in journalistic history. It also set a trend the Post has continued to live up to on an almost daily basis. That must explain today's headline of "Chinese Takeout," referring of course to the most recent hack attack of the US Government's computer system, allegedly by China.

An undercover test of the safety net otherwise known as the TSA airport security screening system registered a failure rate of 95%, it was reported this week. Stated another way, nearly 10 out of 10 attempts to bypass the safety protocols that have been in place at US airports since 9-11 were successful. So much for 3-ounce travel bottles.

The test was conducted by TSA Red Team agents, including one who strapped a fake bomb on his back, which went undetected in a pat down at the security checkpoint (we weren't told which airport). Almost worse, a reporter from the Atlantic Monthly has practically made a career of passing through security with such innocuous carry-on cargo as al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasser Arafat dolls. Also: pocketknives, matches from Middle East hotels, dust masks, rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, toothpaste tubes, bottled water, and box cutters.

Jeffrey M. Weiner joined Marcum in 1981 and has served as Managing Partner since 1990. Under his leadership, Marcum has expanded from a one-office Firm of 20 employees to a Firm ranked #15 in the United States.